Two-Four-Two-To … TottenhamCourtRoad!
The calm voice punctuates a chant between a stop and the other, reminding at each stop that the bus has a name – in fact, a number – and a destination.
I always sit in the front row, if I can. The first place on the first floor. Left or right makes no difference, if it is attached to the window. The rain rubs its tail on the glass, dots of minute droplets which the wind drives away in tears. Two-Four-Two…I look through the rain. I am looking for a comfortable position. From this height, from this corner of moving solitude – dynamic fixity, shared collection, far from any other passenger, also from the one sitting next to you, who is sinking in a telephone or in a book – so curled up: one foot below the bar that runs horizontally to the windshield, head and shoulder against the window – so positioned, from the top of these red beasts I started to know the city.The upper bin of London buses is called upper deck. One learns it when passengers are crowded in front of the entrances and in the hallway as farmed chickens, as long as the driver, annoyed, calls in aid the electronic voice of a gentle lady, which informs: “Seats are available on the upper deck”. And so you think: “Well, here’s how you say it”. The upper deck is really the place from which one learns to draw coordinates, join the dots, creating a network of references, space and geometry. Yet, many shy away from the bus. Instead, the hole stinky and murky underground met with greater confidence. It must be because of the map: so simple and condescending, colorful and limited: tlac tlac, fold carefully, London is in the pocket. Or in the memory of the I-phone. Must be because London Underground is an experience. It’s exciting. And mysterious. It is ancient and profound… and profoundly different, for those who can grasp the nuances. This huge underground maze of capillaries is strictly related to London’s life. Its intimate atmosphere, round, invaded by smells, sounds and wind is always able to arouse a sense of arcane perdition. It’s easy to go down. You look at the map, a friendly game of colored lines that invites to travel. Fingers run from morning to evening on that plastic surface – curious, inquisitive, decided or confused. Thousands of fingers. Then you draw a card from your pocket or handbag – a blue and white card called Oyster – and you go on a yellow sensor: the jaws are then open with a snap, sometimes with violence, as attendants exhausted by a repetitive and boring job. Then you’re allowed in the outpost of this underworld. As a child, I learned to love trains (give me a train and you will get a smile). As a man, I learned to love London’s underground. They call it “Tube”. A typical momentum of english minimalism, given the vastness of this “tube”: «The oldest underground railway network in the world, the largest in Europe and the second largest boasting 460 km of well-autonomous line of which 45% were by underground tunnels, exceeded only by the 467/5 Km of the recent Shanghai plant» (Wikipedia). If there is no work in progress – and there is always somewhere, especially on weekends – we meet the escalators. London knows how to be discreet, often concealing its greatness with modesty, but this does not apply to escalators. Long. Tireless. And accurate. When it works. That is almost always. When it is not, the descent turns into a race of bison. The climb into a real punishment. The steel seems to absorb steps and inflate efforts. But if the metal glides as it should, a ride on the heights of Holborn can ignite romance or gratitude. Romance, if one goes to lean on the belt to meet the eyes of those traveling on the opposite lane… or just watching faces, clothes, attitudes. It is always a fascinating sight. An activity that can be transformed into the game… or a challenge, if someone decides to reply to your look. Gratitude, if yours tired feet will find rest after a long walk. One can combine the two things: the alchemy of the looks and the rest of the warrior.

And here, we get into what journalist Beppe Severgnini called “The deep city”.
A no man’s land. A stomach that belongs only to steps and movement, to a time that is in a hurry to remove any presence, aided by sudden gusts of wind, sometimes very strong, which are mixed with voices and a strange smell that I cannot define well: something between graphite and overheated plastic, a whiff of invisible substances swept away by the compactness of trains arriving and departing. You better walk briskly toward the fixed goal. Otherwise, who’s behind will overtake you, adding a grimace to those already accumulated or to be accumulated. Who takes it calmly is not to get used. Or, in a gesture of rebellion, has decided to break a habit wich, after a while, is introjected to become a rule. And that is: a subway ride is a race. In every sense. When you start to think in these terms, you realize you have become part of the system, small motor gear, solitary globule and hasty, doing slalom as a way of life. And when you discover yourself in a gesture of impatience, with a face, or even hearing your voice saying “sorry” with the petulant intonation, slightly distressed and outraged of english people, there you realize that you really need a break. But there are no possible breaks down here… unless than wanting to attract a hundred insults in a dozen of different languages. The only place where you can stop without the risk of traffic jams, to my knowledge is at the base of the escalators, between a ramp and another. And this is perhaps the best place to witness the tremendous spectacle of human restlessness. This is the bend of the river. The shoal where you can point your feet, contemplating the immense variety of breeds channeled on a neutral background: pure human substance, flesh in motion, eyes, hair, shoes and hats immediately lost, sunk in the sound of footsteps and conversations crumbled. Here you see what you will see walking through the long dark corridors, and then holding on to a handle of a convoy: the city chopped, mixed and never amalgamated. But you see it more clearly, more obvious, such as immobility which contemplates action. And if you stop long enough, if you free yourself enough from the daily cares, from the distractions of your thoughts, then it happens that you start to feel something further – and as below – which is common to all. It is as if there is another plan. An invisible layer. People pass. Back and forth. Intersect, meet, are divided. Are touched. Flow. Feel this level. It’s deeper than an underground. It’s like an electric cable, or a pipe, which you placed your foot on. People pass by. Back and forth. And like all the mysterious things that bloom from the bottom, you have to choose whether to drop them or try to make sense using words. I remind verses by T.S. Eliot: Here is a place of disaffection time before and time after in a dim light. And I can almost understand, but… here we are: this form of time catch us again. We have to go. We detach. The current takes us away, and the secret is forgotten. And the Truth that we saw, back hidden.

After the inevitable mistakes of the beginner, travelling by tube becomes easy. And – when it does not generate stress – even fun. The magic blue plastic square is a overall pass. It allows you to travel for miles without any worries… provided you pay (thirty pounds a week for the first two areas). The trains run every two or three minutes. The platforms are generally clean, even though they often give the impression that a layer of soot irrevocably soak every square inch. Then comes friday evening. Several performances are combined with each other: the hair of a beautiful young blowing in the artificial wing… and the puddle of vomit where sways the minds of those who have really gone too far. Using it daily, one learns what I call “useful distances”. If from Bethnal Green, for instance, you have to get off at Holborn, you learn that getting on the wagon that you face as soon embarked on the entrance of the west bound you’ll find the doors opening exactly in front of Holborn’s way out. It’s a good deal to avoid five minutes of waiting, trapped in that blocked funnel. I know, it sounds a bit crazy (I met a guy who measured the “useful distances” counting steps). But after a while it becomes a matter of survival: just try to multiply those five minutes – lets say three – for twenty days: it’s going to be an hour! That’s why english people runs, and get pissed off if you block the passage on the escalators. Because they know numbers. A wagon… what a place! It seems the perfect place for a meeting. Two rows of seats, facing each other in a neighborhood that has – I dare to say – something erotic. But it is not. Removed the usual exceptions, silence more often reigns supreme. Lack of communication thickens the distance, and an emptiness of looks. You sit in a corner. You cling to a bar. Swinging observe this gallery of dumb faces, fixed in a vacuum, bent over a book. Rarely, someone intent to rummage in the faces of others. And so – you think -, are we really like trees of a large forest? Cortázar wrote: our trunks are close but never meet, except for a rubbing of leaves. Isolated separate entities, grazig in the casual game of the foliage. And everyone has a own path already decided, but not evident to the others. We can only lose each other, in the respect of predetermined commitments. Down here, where everything takes place in the sign of the most ruthless break, I was never given to forge a new acquaintance. It seems to me that each station possesses its own personality. Euston and King’s Cross stand strict and labyrinthine. At Piccadilly Circus I seem to go down in the cellar. Holborn has an air of office. Covent Garden is claustrophobic, and hides a trap more insidious than the queues that engorge its two lifts. And that is: the stairs! Only once, unaware, I have attempted the climb. I was in a hurry and I said to myself: “Why not?”. Well, that experience, I guess, must have shortened my life by a few days. Those stairs are not long, but endless. Their narrow spiral angle never changes, so you end up almost being hypnotized. You begin to hope that the output will present at the next bend (while you begin to repent of choice) then you look back and see that other unfortunates like you dry off the sweat. There you say: well, maybe it wasn’t a good idea. But you cannot come back: we’re always too proud to consider wasted the energy already used. And then – damn it – the output should be forthcoming! But it is not. It is not. That is a experience you try just one time. Provided you are not masochists. But if you are, I recommend it: you’ll have lots of fun.

How many transports… they also have a personality. Buses… red elephants that do not wait… the Tube, mysterious and relentless worm… cabs, elegance of black poppies in the traffic… blue bikes, ephemeral companions of a sunny afternoon… the Overground, kind lady dressed in orange, particularly dear to me. Maybe because more similar to a normal train. Perhaps because it’s traveling in the open air, slicing through landscapes. Or Because of the color – so sunny ! – or maybe just the fact that I put it in relation to pleasant things: fishing and holydays, sugar cubes, Hampstead Heath, peaceful hillside… from south-east to south-west, cutting to the north, combining so many different places, such as the place where I lived for a long time, and its opposite: the magnificent Kew Gardens, and Richmond, with its green, its open sky crossed by airplanes… its richness, a little bit snob and detached. On London transports you find a inexhaustible human universe. The most extravagant situations and most amazing specimens. Once, coming home late at night, I saw a zombie. I was sitting on a bus, a little further back than my usual place. The zombie climbed the staircase on the upper deck with tottering steps, mumbling something I could not decipher. He had torn and dusty clothes, broken shoes, a long beard and dirty hair. Then he started to chant a word: newspaper. He repeated mechanically, groping for his newspaper. Then he found it, passed me, and sat on top of the bus but without reading it. Then the electronic voice has marked the next stop, and the zombie started to repeat that name with a flat voice, as if trying to decipher a secret, to find a meaning in it, a sense that was lost, at some point, during his wretched life. I also remember the oriental girl who was crying under the sibilant allegations of his partner, and the little man with glasses who tried in vain to defend her: he just vent his resentment raising his middle finger while leaving the bus. And the black man with dreamy eyes that said to me: “do the right thing”. And I replied: “of course”. And him, with a sly smile: “But you do not know what would be the right thing for me”. Who knows what he meant. I remember that crazy race started in Camden Town, the upper deck crowded of drunks. One guy threw up in the hallway and a fat woman started to laugh and squeal, clapping her hands, delighted every time someone came down, trying to get around it, climbing on chairs or slipping on the puddle as a inexperienced skater. Scenes of ordinary madness and melancholy. But also the tenderness of the students in uniform, the brothers who are holding hands, the fluffy hair of africans and the eternal child with his nose, eyes and mouth pressed against the window in a mixture of dream and attraction for the reality that slides out there, the world he will have to face, one day. How many people. How much haste. How many coincidences and plans.

What would be London without transports? Nothing. Sometimes I think about it. If I had to choose a fragment of the city, make it the symbol of the everything to which it belongs, I would get unfolded behind my closed eyes an immense network: lines, paths, junctions and tracks. Then, a blink of an eye would turn that design, mixing contours. Colors and lines would melt, the viscous material would stretch in the profile of skyscrapers – the Gherkin, the Heron Tower, The Shard – it would spread in green and blue pools – Hyde Park, Regent’s Park, Holland Park – I would see it writhing in narrow lanes, mapping the streets of Covent Garden, Hampstead and Notting Hill. Finally, a third blink of an eye would bring me back on a bus, with a chant in the ears (24 )while the rain taps the windshield, and in the plot of drops I recognize a road that now bend, now proceeds straight and safe for a few kilometers, sometimes slows down, it shows at times, at times proceeds with difficulty to the next junction, and who knows where I’m headed, who will get in, if I’ll meet somebody… or if I’ll rest alone and in silence, as often happens, watching the scenery, spying faces and thoughts, writing them down on a notebook or simply loosing myself, as our gaze is lost, sometimes, on a windshield that meets the rain.

London is a trip.

F.B.
08/30/2013

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